Escape (41 page)

“It should be safe to wake her now. It may take some work to rouse her, and she'll be groggy, but we cannot afford to delay. For her it may already be too late. I suggest you keep your weapons trained upon her, just in case.”

Jilly frowned. “You make her sound worse than the wolvins.”

“In the final stages of changing she will undergo a complete personality shift. In our codices are stories of people becoming psychotic.”

“If that's true,” Kieran began, “then how can the changed ones have survived on
 
.
 
.
 
.
whatever the world of our supposed origin is called
—
”

“Earth,” Lystra supplied.

“Right. How could they have survived for all these thousands of years? Surely a society made up of psychotic people would have self-destructed by now.”

“I do not know everything, Kieran Hawker, but logic would suggest that they have learned to control themselves. Now, quickly, rouse your friend, and let us be on our way.”

Friend
 
.
 
.
 
.
Kieran thought with dry amusement as he turned and stalked toward Dimmi.
Ha!

Ferrel began shaking her by the shoulders, telling her to wake up, and Jilly stood back with her neural disruptor aimed.

By the time Kieran reached her, Dimmi's eyes were fluttering beneath the lids. He frowned, wondering what, if anything that meant. Then her eyes shot open and she skewered him with her bloody gaze. Her eyes were so red now, and her skin so pale that she looked like a daimon. Her lips parted in a slow smile that turned quickly to a toothy grin.

“Hello, Kieran,” she said. “I missed you
 
.
 
.
 
.
” she whispered throatily, and Kieran frowned, his brow furrowing with confusion. Jilly gave him an odd glance, then her eyes skipped back to Dimmi and her finger tightened on the trigger of her pistol.

Dimmi sat up slowly, and Ferrel backed away from her, his thoughts seeming suddenly anxious. Her head panned quickly left, right, and back again, taking in the wolvins, Lystra Deswin sitting atop his, and the unfamiliar environment all within the span of a second. She'd been knocked out cold by three sedative-laced arrows within the underground caverns of the Constantic Temple, and now she'd awoken in the long, dark grass of the world's surface. Not knowing anything of the journey between, and perhaps now affiliating all of them with the reappearance of Lystra Deswin, the traitor, she fixed Kieran with deadly look.

The shift in the tone of her thoughts was their only warning: there was a sudden, murky texture to them, and then clear, unmistakable meaning burned like fire from her mind to each of theirs in an instant:
I'm going to kill you all.

Kieran's mouth shot open to explain, but he was too late. Her hand blurred in a quick flash of movement, and Kieran saw something glint wickedly in the distant light of Lystra's flaming torch. Then one of Dimmi's daggers flew through the air and lodged itself just beneath his sternum. Kieran gazed stupidly at the hilt protruding from his chest, and the blood squirting out around it in hot, black jets. He heard Jilly scream, and fire her pistol twice, rapidly. The twin bolts of energy crackled out and slammed into Dimmi's forehead and thigh. She slumped back into the grass. Kieran's vision narrowed to a murky tunnel. His mind grew suddenly quiet, and his last thought was a question:

She killed me?

Chapter 22

J
illy stared numbly at Kieran's lifeless body. The blood had stopped spurting from his knife wound, and her bloody hands had long since stopped trying to do chest compressions. His heart was simply too damaged to be restarted. She knew from long experience as a doctor that some injuries simply could not be fixed in time to save a life, no matter how advanced the equipment used, and she'd had nothing
—
not even a defibrillator.

Ferrel sat beside her in the grass, his hands alternately curling and uncurling, tearing up great handfuls of the herbage, his piercing red eyes fixed upon Kieran's lifeless face. Lystra Deswin was coraling the saddled wolvins from atop his own, trying to keep them from slinking away.

“What do we do now?” Ferrel asked,  his voice coming out small and inflectionless.

“We have to go,” Jilly heard herself say the words, but could scarcely believe she'd uttered them. Going meant leaving Kieran behind. Dead, and behind. Food for the wolvins to come back to later.

“But
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

“She's right,” Lystra spoke stridently into a sudden gust of wind, and his shoulder-height wolvin appeared beside them, its great brown-furred head bowed suspiciously close to Kieran, sniffing cautiously. A low growl emitted from its throat, and Lystra gave the saddle straps a sharp tug, bringing the beast's head away from its intended meal. “We must leave them.”

“Them?” Ferrel echoed incredulously. He sent Dimmi a quick glance and his eyes returned to gaze accusingly up at Lystra. “
She's
not dead,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

“Ferrel,” Jilly began, her voice soft and gentle, as though she were speaking to a child. “We have no choice. She tried to kill Kieran. And you heard what she was thinking.”

At this Lystra's head cocked abruptly to one side and his eyes narrowed. “So it's true. You can hear one another's thoughts.”

“Not all of them,” Jilly replied. “Only the ones that form as words in your head. Everything left unspoken. And only if we're paying attention.”

Lystra began nodding distracedly, as if filing those details away for future reference.

Ferrel was busy waging a silent war of unspoken thoughts with Jilly. His blood-red eyes held hers unblinkingly.
If we leave her, it will be the same as killing her ourselves. Go ahead, slit her throat. I want to see you do it! You don't have the balls for it, do you?
He knew that line of reasoning would unnerve Jilly.

And he was right. Her gaze faltered, and her eyes slid away from his, finding Kieran's lifeless face instead.
We can't take her with us. She's not even awake. She won't be able to ride.

So strap her down. Bind her wrists. I don't care how you do it, but we're not leaving her to be eaten alive by wolvins!

Jilly's head snapped around, her eyes suddenly hard. Her hands were balled into fists and she spoke through gritted teeth: “She
killed
Kieran! And you want to bring her with us? At best she's a murderer, and we don't have time to bring her to justice. Let the Elementals decide her fate.”

Ferrel's mouth opened to object, but Lytra shook his head quietly. “We have nothing with us to afix her to a mount, and even if we did, she would slow us down too much. If we take her, your own lives will be forfeit. You will both be completely changed before we ever reach Crater City, and I will be forced to kill you.”

A long moment passed in which Ferrel could do nothing but stare into Dimmi's sleeping countenance. Her chest rose and fell steadily in a way that Kieran's no longer could.

“Ferrel
 
.
 
.
 
.
” Jilly began.

His thoughts were still conflicted, but Lystra settled the mental war for him by tossing a clay jar down to land in the grass beside them.

“Open it,” the old man said.

Ferrel obliged, and a foul odor immediately wafted out. He shyed away, his nose wrinkled in disgust. A cutting breeze came, and the wolvins grew suddenly agitated.

“The spoor of the whiptailed kylion,” Lystra explained. “The only beast a wolvin may fear. His only predator. The smell will keep the wolvins away long enough for her to awake. After that
 
.
 
.
 
.
survival will be up to her.”

“And what about this kylion creature? What if it comes for her?” Ferrel asked.

“They are not common. I have only ever seen two, and I have lived on Da Shon my entire life. Quickly now. The wolvins will not stay much longer now that they've scented the spoor. You must saddle your mounts or lose them.”

With that, Ferrel and Jilly both rose from the grass, and each headed for the nearest beast. Ferrel mounted the black and white one, and Jilly the gray. It took Ferrel a couple of tries to successfully pull himself atop the wolvin, and once he had, he sat awkwardly atop the beast. He and Jilly both took hold of their saddle straps, and seeing this, Lystra leaned forward, and kicked his mount in the ribs. The tan-brown beast sprang forward with such sudden, incredible speed that Jilly was surprised to see that Lystra had managed to stay atop his mount. They watched him dissapearing into the night, all but flying down the steep hill.

Riding the wolvins would be a challenge. With a final glance in Kieran and Dimmi's direction, Jilly kicked her own mount in the ribs and flew after the old Constantic.

Ferrel, inexperienced with riding animals of any kind, took a moment to ready himself, leaning forward as he'd seen Lystra do, and then he gave a sharp kick and tore down the hill after Jilly and Lystra. A cold wind whistled past his ears and seemed to bite into the exposed skin of his face and hands. Then came a rumble of thunder overhead, and a crooked finger of light split the blackness all the way down to the horizon, leaving a sparkling, blurry line of an afterimage burning before his sensitive eyes. He felt the first icy flake fall on his nose, but it melted so fast he thought it had been rain. Then dozens more landed, and Ferrel watched them melt on his hands and the sleeves of his tunic. Soon they were riding into a thick, driving curtain of snow that blinded even Ferrel's enhanced eyesight. He wondered how the animals could see where they were going, and more importantly, how Lystra Deswin knew the way in either snow or torchless night. Jilly echoed his thoughts with her own, and called out to their Constantic guide:

“How do you know where you're going?”

“I don't!” He called back, struggling to be heard through the driving snow and the wind of their passage. “But they do!”

They
being the wolvins, Ferrel supposed, and that thought was as unsettling as the idea of them getting lost. The wolvins had to be fairly intelligent to know where to go in the dark and driving snow, let alone to be
told
where to go, and actually
understand
. His suspicion of the beasts intensified, and not for the first time he wondered if this might be a trap.

* * *

Brathus and Garlan awoke in a room with reflective white walls and two beds, each of them lying in one. Equipment beeped and buzzed beside them, monitoring life signs, and when Brathus was awake enough to want to sit up, a signal was sent from one of the machines wired to him to a nurses station just outside the room's plain white door. The nurse entered before Brathus had finished blinking up at the ceiling and trying to understand how and why he was there.

She appeared beside his bed, a data pad in one hand, a stylus in the other, and smiled down at him. “How are you feeling?”

Brathus blinked at her, and worked some moisture into his dry mouth. His reply came out as a scratchy whisper: “Water
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

“Of course, in a moment. First we'd like to ask you some questions. What's your name?”

Brathus eyed her suspiciously. “Surely you know that from my bloodprint.”

“Yes
 
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.
 
.
”

“So don't ask stupid questions. My turn. Where am I?”

“Tekasi Med Center, Crater City.”

Brathus's brow wrinkled. “And where's that?”

“Da Shon. Now, mister
 
.
 
.
 
.
” The nurse consulted her data pad briefly, then looked up with another smile plastered on her face. “Poloski, unfortunately, you have come to us at an awkward moment. Your bloodprint says you're a known member of the Carloni Clan, but you and your friend were found floating in a Union escape pod. After the battle which transpired in orbit over Da Shon, we are understandably concerned. Do you deny that you had any part in the conflict?”

“What the kefick would a Carloni be doing helping the Union? Use your pretty little head, sister.”

The nurse's smile turned to a frown. “I see. Well, I'll be sure to tell the authorities exactly that when they come to arrest you for collusion with terrorists.”

“Wait,” Brathus said. “I can explain.”

“I'm listening.”

“We came into the system near the end of the battle in a rented fighter. We tried to skirt the battle, but took collateral damage from a missile. While I was trying to fix the damage, another ship appeared. A Union ship. I hailed it for help. It docked to our fighter, and
 
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”